<div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><div>The thing I like is VI because it is almost universal. Windows, Linux, BSD and Unix.</div><div><br></div><div>In a pinch I use "ed".<br></div><div><br></div><div>Sad to hear today that its creator has passed away.</div><div><br></div><div>--Ken<br></div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Aug 5, 2023 at 7:53 PM <<a href="mailto:scj@yaccman.com">scj@yaccman.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif">
<p>I took typing in Summer School. My parents bought me a typewriter with mathematical symbols on it, which was almost worthless, and I had to improvise to get some of the standard characters (for example, the semicolon was comma/backspace/colon). By the time I was talking to computers ( Model 33 tty) I was happy that I couldn't type faster because it was impossible on that thing.</p>
<p>Steve</p>
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<p id="m_-5224792593270960396reply-intro">On 2022-11-02 00:11, Rob Pike wrote:</p>
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<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">Neither ken nor dmr were impressive typists. In fact few programmers were then, at least of my acquaintance.</div>
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<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">In the 1970s Bell Labs created the Getset - think of it as an early wired smartphone, or a Minitel, with a little screen and keyboard. It cost quite a bit but was a cool gadget so the executives all got one. But, in fascinating contrast to the Blackberry a generation later, no one would touch it - literally - because it had a keyboard, and keyboards were for (female) secretaries, not (male) executives. The product, although well ahead of its time, was a complete failure due to the cultural bias then.</div>
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<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">There may be a good sociology paper in there somewhere.</div>
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<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">I'm not saying K&D shared this blinkered view, not at all, just that typing skills were not de facto back then. Some of the folks were even two-finger jabbers. I was a little younger and a faster typist than most of the others, and I am not a good typist by any modern standard.</div>
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<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">bwk was one who could smash out the text faster than many. His having learned on a teletype, the keyboard would resound with the impact of his forceful keystrokes.</div>
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<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">-rob</div>
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<div dir="ltr">On Wed, Nov 2, 2022 at 5:53 PM Michael Kjörling <<a href="mailto:e5655f30a07f@ewoof.net" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">e5655f30a07f@ewoof.net</a>> wrote:</div>
<blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">On 2 Nov 2022 13:36 +1100, from <a href="mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au</a> (steve jenkin):<br>> There's at least one Internet meme that highly productive coders<br>> necessarily have good keyboard skills, which leads to also producing<br>> documentation or, at least, not avoiding it entirely, as often<br>> happens commercially.<br><br>I wouldn't be so sure that this necessarily follows. Good keyboard<br>skills definitely help with the mechanics of typing code as well as<br>text, I'll certainly grant that; but someone can be a good typist yet<br>write complete gibberish, or be a poor/slow typist and _by necessity_<br>need to consider each word that they use because typing an extra<br>sentence takes them so long. If it takes you ten seconds to type out a<br>normal sentence, revising becomes less of an issue than if typing out<br>the same sentence takes a minute or a minute and a half.<br><br>Also, certainly in my case and I doubt that I'm alone, a lot of my<br>time "coding" isn't spent doing the mechanics of "writing code", but<br>rather considering possible solutions to a problem, and what the<br>consequences would be of different choices. That part of the software<br>development process is essentially unaffected by how good one is as a<br>typist, and I expect that the effect would be even more pronounced for<br>someone using something like an ASR-33 and edlin, than a modern<br>computer and visual editor. Again, the longer it takes to revise<br>something, the more it makes sense to get it right on the first<br>attempt, even if that means some preparatory work up-front.<br><br>Writing documentation is probably more an issue of mindset and being<br>allowed the time, than it is a question of how good one is as a<br>typist.<br><br>-- <br>🪶 Michael Kjörling 🏡 <a href="https://michael.kjorling.se" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://michael.kjorling.se</a><br>"Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?"<br><br></blockquote>
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</blockquote></div><br clear="all"><br><span class="gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span><br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div>End of line</div><div>JOB TERMINATED<br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></div>